A message arrives on the mobile phone of a client of an entity that grants credit. They notify you that an installment purchase is being made with your data. Almost simultaneously, that person receives a phone call, supposedly from the same entity, in which they are notified that someone is trying to make a fraudulent purchase with their identity and that they need to know the code put in the message they just sent. receive. The person, in a nervous state, trusts that call, because the number also matches the entity’s customer service number. He provides them with the code. The trap is made. Scammers are also behind that call. This is what the victim experiences. With this fast and effective scheme, they can deceive up to 60 users.
A new cybercrime unit of the Madrid Police Headquarters made up of 28 agents has stopped this gang made up of at least seven people. They operated from a kind of call center (call center) that they had set up at the home of one of those involved, in the Madrid municipality of Leganés. From there they selected the victims, made the purchases and called the unfortunate targets. The voice that those affected heard was always that of a woman.
The mechanism was simple, they bought mobile phones, computers and televisions in online stores, selected to pay them in installments and entered the data obtained from a customer base of a lending institution that they had accessed illegally.
How they obtained the victims’ data
“We are still investigating how they obtained the victims’ information, it may be that the company has suffered a hackinga leak of information or that criminals have purchased it through the dark web (dark internet) to criminals who in turn sell this type of bases,” explains the head of the operation, Inspector Fandiño. The group began investigating the existence of a possible scam network when it detected several similar complaints in a short period of time.
The network made purchases worth between one thousand and 5,000 euros, a significant amount for any ordinary citizen. When they received the purchased product, they sold it to third parties. “We have to determine how they placed the products, one of the possibilities is that they acted on request, that is, it was the final buyer who told them what device he wanted,” says the inspector. The police estimate that the gang made off with 100,000 euros in five months.
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All of the detainees are “digital natives”, that is, men no older than 30 who have grown up among social networks, video games and internet tutorials. This is how they learned the keys to this scam from which they do not obtain huge amounts of money, but it does represent a way to pay for their living without working. The group had learned the notions of this cybercrime in a self-taught way. Since they saw that it worked for them at first, they continued and even grew by recruiting new members.
The organization had a leader who managed data and orders. There were also those known as mules, which are different from those of drug trafficking. In this band it is called mule to the member who gives their data so that the order arrives at home or provides a name with which to pick up the package. It is the last link in the framework. There are also those who call the victims and those who execute the purchase.
They all had their operations center in the home of one of the detainees in Leganés, from which they planned their attacks. To sophisticate the execution, they also used computer programs that made the number that appeared on the victims’ screens correspond to the financial institution’s real customer service number, in case those affected searched for it on the Internet.
This criminal group was also diversifying its business, because in the searches carried out, the police found half a kilo of marijuana prepared for sale, with signs that it had been transported from a plantation elsewhere. Many of them had a history of having previously defrauded. online.
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